Astroengine v2.0 After much deliberation and planning, I made the decision to give Astroengine.com a complete facelift. Although the black-background/off-white text had served me well, I noticed that the dark colour scheme was ageing pretty quickly (and giving some of my readers eye strain!). As the...

Doomsday articles are now available in Spanish With special thanks to Manuel Herman at Ciencia Kanija (Puny Science), four of my Universe Today 2012 No Doomsday articles have been translated into Spanish. Today, as many as 322 to 400 million people speak Spanish world-wide, making it the second most-spoken...

Could the Shuttle be revived until 2015? (NASA) Whether you are surprised by this news or not, it is a big development for the future of NASA. An internal email within the space agency has instructed staff to begin preliminary planning for a feasibility study into extending the life of the Space Shuttle...

Gary McKinnon being interviewed via phone by Jerry Pippin (jerrypippin.com) Gary McKinnon, a British computer analyst, has failed in his appeal against extradition to the US. McKinnon is accused of accessing 97 US military and NASA computers during his search for information about a possible US government...

Phoenix sees the Sun dip below the horizon for the first time in 90 sols. It's going to get pretty cold out there... (NASA/JPL/UA) This stunning image was taken by Phoenix on the 90th sol (Mars day) – or August 25th here on Earth – of its mission to the Red Planet. Until now the Sun has remained...

The ISS crew are currently trying to purge on board computers of the W32.Gammima.AG worm (NASA) International Space Station (ISS) software security has been brought into question after on board systems were infected by a computer virus earlier this month. This is possibly the first time that a computer...

Solar panels have never looked so good. GOCE is the Porsche of orbital engineering (GOCE/ESA) The European Space Agency is set to launch the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) Star Destroyer satellite on September 10th. This advanced mission will be the most sophisticated...

Yearly location of stars within 0.2 parsecs from Sagittarius A* orbiting the common, compact radio source (A. Ghez) We are told there is a supermassive black hole living in the centre of our galaxy. Apparently, supermassive black holes can be found in the centre of most galactic nuclei, and all the stars...

Moment of detonation: the ATK ALV X-1 rocket and $17 million NASA payload scrubbed in an instant (Explorer Fish) Early yesterday morning an Alliant Techsystems (ATK) ALV X-1 rocket launched from NASA’s launch facility at Wallops Island, VA. However, only 27 seconds and 11,000 feet into the flight,...

Hubble Space Telescope observation of Polaris - looking through the Oort Cloud, but not resolving any comets (Hubble) The Oort Cloud is a mysterious entity. Located on the outskirts of the Solar System, this hypothetical region is probably the source of the long-period comets that occasionally pass through...